Paul Verlaine, French poet, was a leader of the symbolist movement.
Verlaine was born on March 30, 1844, in Metz, the son of an army officer, and educated at the Lycйe Bonaparte in Paris. His early works, including Poиmes saturniens (1866), are characterized by the antiromanticism of the Parnassians with whom Verlaine was then associated; the verse is concerned more with technique than with feeling.

In 1870 Verlaine married, but he left his wife two years later to travel and live with the 1..